The
N&O has an article up about the Maggette/Piggie situation which is sort
of a mixed bag. The bad news: Maggette "submitted a false and fraudulent Student-Athlete Statement to Duke University on Oct. 27, 1998, certifying that he had not received payments to participate in basketball."
The good news, according to Chris Kennedy, associate AD, insofar is there is
any good news, is that the NCAA apparently sees Duke as a victim in this
situation.
However, Kennedy also said that doesn't mean the NCAA won't ask for the
tourney money back.
He goes on to point out that Duke had missed on primary prospects Dane Fife,
losing him to Indiana, and Danny Miller, who went to Maryland, saying that
Maggette wasn't Duke's first target and that, considering how late Duke made a push with Maggette, it was hard to know what had happened.
We keep hearing about this situation, and what seems to have happened is
this: Maggette, who from all accounts started out as a good kid from a nice
family, in our opinion may have been corrupted by the process, to the extent that he
allegedly took money and was forced by the federal government to testify before
a Grand Jury.
When he was asked about it, Maggette first said he didn't know anything about
and and he had to go to church and couldn't talk.
Later his attorney said that he had advised Maggette not to talk about it at
all.
Obviously there's stuff we don't know about yet - primarily exactly what he
testified about - but if the allegations are true then Maggette appears to
be the biggest jerk ever to play at Duke. If it turns out that he did sign the
document saying that he took no money and in fact took money, as alleged, Duke should ask
him first of all to repay the cost of his scholarship. If Duke is forced to
repay the money they received from the tournament, it wouldn't surprise us
if the University asked Maggette to either contribute to the shortfall or
actually sued him for damages, because if what was alleged to have happened did
in fact happen then he defrauded the University.
For our part, though as we have said there's stuff we don't know yet, and so far only allegations about Maggette, we can say, in our opinion, what a loser. He's embarrassed
everyone he was associated with at Duke, including his good friends Elton Brand
and William Avery, his other teammates, his coaches, and the University in
general. More importantly, he has embarrassed his parents and family,
because no matter what happens, no matter what comes out of these allegations, for the rest of his
career and possibly the rest of his life, he's going to be known in some quarters as Corey
Maggette, the guy who (allegedly) sold his integrity for a measly 2,000 dollars. We
speak for no one but ourselves when we say say: good riddance.